Feb 9, 2022 3 min read

In December, as a deadly fire raged at Thomas Campbell Apartments, it took the local fire department 18 minutes to arrive on scene.

South Strabane Township Fire Chief Scott Reese pointed to the department’s low volunteer pool as the primary reason for the delayed response, saying, “That is not an acceptable time.”

The fire broke out at the senior high-rise just before 12:30 a.m. Frances Venen, 78, died a few days later in a Pittsburgh hospital from injuries she suffered in the fire.

While South Strabane Fire Department has paid staff, their last shift ended at 11 p.m.

“When your career staff leaves, and the station is non-staffed, then you have to understand that at 12:30 in the morning you have to get people out of bed, add travel time to the haul, get dressed, get on the rig and then get the rig to the location,” Reese said Tuesday.

Reese said the Washington Fire Department was on the scene in five minutes, and that he arrived just a few minutes later.

According to Reese, the crews that arrived first immediately went to work rescuing people inside the burning building. There were many residents trapped on the fifth and sixth floors, and Reese said they needed to get them out before they could focus on knocking down the fire.

“People first, property second,” Reese said.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, the standard response time to a fire should be six minutes.

Until recently the department had only 12 volunteers, but according to Reese, there are two new recruits.

“The issue is once you get in your recruits, by the time that you can get them through some fundamentals and essentials, which is your basic training classes to get started, you’re going to be probably almost a year’s time before you actually reap the benefit of them being on the apparatus and going out and doing the job,” Reese said.

Last fall volunteers at the department criticized the township board of supervisors for not making agreed upon quarterly payments to the department, to the tune of $110,000. At the time, township Manager Brandon Stanick pointed to issues with the department as reason for withholding payment, particular their responses to fires.

Stanick said it is the goal of the township to get the fire department to provide consistent 24/7 service, a goal Reese reiterated Tuesday.

“What we’re trying to look at and trying to work out is to try and enhance staffing so that we’re going to be able to try to make better time, and have a better response time to all of our areas,” Reese said.

The township hired two firefighters last year. However, Reese said one of the new hires took a job elsewhere, and that they plan to hire a total of three this year.

The township had commissioned a study in 2020 to help determine how to best reach the goal of 24/7 service. The resulting report suggested significant changes to the organizational structure of the fire department.

Fire department volunteers rejected the proposal, arguing it placed too much with the board of supervisors and too little with the department’s firefighters, both paid and unpaid.